Browsed byMonth: February 2010

Image by elston via Flickr There’s a lot in the news today about the profit that energy companies are making. Now, while it’s fine for companies to make profit, the man in the street takes a dim view of companies that make exorbitant profit and his expense. And this is just how this energy profit is seen. Wholesale prices have dropped, while retail prices have stayed pretty much level and consumers are feeling cheated by what has happened. Perception is…

Was thinking this morning about how a lot of the world’s problems are about the irregular distribution of resources. I’m not talking about how wealth is distributed, I’m a capitalist at heart; but rather how the world’s resources are cause of war, famine and all sorts of other ills. It sort of hit me while watching TV and saw an advert trying to raise funds for a charity that helps starving children, while here I am trying to stick to…

I just came across an interesting article that points out that Americans are cheating more on their tax return than they used to in the past. 13% of those surveyed said cheating is acceptable, according to an annual poll conducted for the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board. That’s up 4% from 2008. 4% percent of Americans said they cheat on their taxes “as much as possible,” up 1% from the year before. They’re interesting statistics, but worrying ones for tax…

There’s a lot of noise in the media at the moment about Chinese hackers making their way into western computer systems, particularly into systems of large commercial organisations like Google and Cardinal Health Inc. The reality is that as soon as you connect your network to the outside world you are exposing yourself to this risk and you need to find ways to control and mitigate these actions. The question that’s always worth asking is if you can get away…

I was just reading an article on BBC business about how retail sales are showing a 1.8% drop between December and January. It’s a worrying sign because it could be an indication that the economy is headed for another contraction just after having supposedly come out of a recession. The thing about retail sales is that I’m not 100% sure how they capture online shopping, if they do so at all. The thing about recession is that people start looking…

An interesting article in This Is Money talks about that’s happening in the UK and how the increase in government spending is digging a black hole that’s going to be really hard to get out of. It’s almost like people responsible for spending should be looking at weight loss products for their budget. Government income in the UK is down, but spending is up, a situation that is just unsustainable. It’s an interesting article and worth reading, if you’re interesting…